Notes From An Old School House

Monday, January 6, 2014

That's what our 2 2/3 year-old said over Christmas when he came back to the table. And he's one of the reasons I haven't blogged since July 15th. Him and his brother along with real-world obligations and exhaustion from the utter inanity and narcissistic paranoia of much of the internet.

But I figured with the new year I would give it another go, if for no reason other than practicing my writing. 2013 was the first year the first year in ages I had nothing to do with academia and that was great. Expect a broadside against the institution as it now exists and even shots at those privileged folks who now knock the system because it stop working for it. After that I wash my hands of higher ed. Otherwise I have no plan for what I write and when.

I am still undecided if I will go back to updating the What The Frack Pennsylvania? blog and related twitter feed. After the birth of Kevin there was no time for it and I have serious doubts that there is a market on-line for scientific analysis of energy issues, people seem to want their ideological bases for why they are for or against something confirmed, facts be damned.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Monday Movie Madness, where I review a movie that I recently saw for the first time. This week's offering is Looper (2012).
One of my favorite time travel movies is The Final Countdown, where the modern (in 1980s terms) carrier USS Nimitzis somehow transported back in time. Well not just back to any old time, but serendipitously back to December 1941 just to prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's a pretty entertaining flick as long as you don't expand neurons on how contrived the circumstances have to be to move the plot along; Nimitz has to be in the right place and time to encounter the unexplained time portal, of all the points in time possible it goes back to 1941 where it a modern nuclear-powered carrier and jet air wing would change a pivotal moment in naval history, and (this is a flaw in every time travel story for me) despite the fact that Earth, the solar system and the Milky Way are constantly moving through space Nimitz still winds up in the equivalent position in another time instead of empty space. The thing is if you dissect any time travel movie these plot absurdities become the movie for you, rather than the story. A willing suspension of disbelief is thus required, unless of course the story has no redeeming story or entertainment value, in that case going MST3K becomes the only reason to watch it.

Which brings me to this weeks movie, Looper. The basic premise is that in the late 21st century time travel will be invented, but immediately outlawed due to the obvious implications. In an apparent case of " if time travel is outlawed only outlaws will have time travel", organized crime uses time travel for whacking people. It works like this, in the 2070s biometric tracking makes it hard to kill and dispose of bodies (although scenes set in that period show goons threatening and killing people so it assumed not to be a universal problem), so victims are sent back in time to 2040s Kansas (!?!) were an assassin waits in a cornfield at the designated time to off and dispose the unfortunate victim. The executioners use a futuristic shotgun that can't miss at short range and can't hit the broad side of a barn past that range. I try here to avoid spoilers but this range issue becomes a critical Chekov's gun later on. In fact there are many odd details that seem unnecessary that become integral as the movie progresses. The whackee is sent back in time hooded and with silver bars attached for payment. Sometime in the future every assassin will be looped back in time to be killed by their younger self. This becomes a problem when one looper, Joshua Gordon-Leavitt suddenly meets his older, unhooded self in the form of Bruce Willis. The sight of his future self leads to hesitation on the art of Leavitt and the escape of Willis.

Now it this point you have to wonder, why have time travel just to use it for corpse disposal, why wouldn't someone use it to, you know, kill Hitler or someone like him? Wouldn't that be more of a story? Well without revealing more, answering that question is what this movie surprisingly becomes. Fair warning, the way the movie answers this question is both disturbing and very sad.

Looper also does a fairly good job imagining a future where every thing is not contemporary, kinda like right now or any other real point in time. Leavitt and Willis do a great job playing a single character at different points in time and Leavitt is made up to look like a younger version of Bruce.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Predicting what our progeny will think is important about our current world may be a fool's game, that is until you consider climate change. The post-Industrial Revolution carbon dioxide in the atmosphere isn't in a hurry to go anywhere and we continue inject more at an accelerating rate. Greater amounts of heat will be retained by the atmosphere and later generations (emphasis on the plural) will experience changes in weather, ecosystems and civilization. It doesn't require any great predictive powers to believe that our descendants will consider our action, and lack of, to climate change as our most important legacy

That's my guess for the future. As for the present it is obvious that the great and little minds of the media empires rank climate change as not being very newsworthy. Yesterday, President gave the most frank and forceful speech by any U.S. president on the matter, a speech that also announced significant concrete executive action. Yet both while he was talking and immediately afterwards CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox and even MSNBC barely covered it, the only exception was the Weather Channel. When I flipped on CNN rather than see the speech or even talking yahoos dissembling it I was transported back to my time in San Diego in the mid-80s because CNN was breathlessly reporting on a car chase on Southern California freeway. The media empires website's were just as negligent. NBCnews.com relegated the speech it to the secondary sidebar items, but at least it was near the top of the page. But that's much better than CBSnews.com where it was buried way down the page in small font, Paula Deen was rated as more newsworthy. An hour later, CNN.com did post the story at the top, along with video. But they had to add a truthinews bit that asked if "Americans care about climate change". Yes, the actual facts only matter to CNN of they think the public cares. Many thanks to Stephen Colbert for coming up with that term just in time. Come to think of it, maybe that is the problem in a nutshell. The importance of an issue to the public and the media who wants their attention is not based on the actually events, risks and facts but on the narcissism of the viewers.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

From the internet that is. First I was up in Massachusetts and had spotty service, then the hard drive developed the Blue Screen of Death.

But that's not the full story. For I've grown bored and irritated with the internet. It is still useful as an accelerated and interconnected communications device with great resources, but as a place to spend much time "socializing" it is a pathetic world of paranoid libertarian/anarchist fucktwits with little regard to what actually happens on the ground as they say. It's reality TV on steroids (here is where I place the obligatory "I am aware of the irony). That's not to say there aren't real gems there, but the volume of crap is increasing. I have also grown increasingly annoyed at those impressed that they can use gadgets so simple an energetic cattle dog could operate them, the so-called "tech savvy" crowd. And then there are the people who are more freaked out that the metadata for their inane tweets and instagrams may be in an anonymous giant pile than they were over schoolkids getting slaughtered. Get off your pedestal folks, you're nothing more than the latest product of consumer marketing and the volume of crap you post and share will not grant you any sort of immortality. Long story short I needed to get away.

I will post as I find the time, mainly as a way to practice my writing but also as a means of venting. I could care less if anyone reads it, but if they do I thank them.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Monday Movie Madness, where I review a movie that I recently saw for the first time. Yeah, I meant this to be a weekly feature months ago but got distracted. This week's offering is Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011).

Like many I felt Conan got a raw deal when he was canned from the Tonight Show and have been curious about his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television tour. I assumed that this documentary would either be a recording of one gig on that tour or a blow-blow account of his departure from the Tonight Show and the subsequent tour. It is somewhat of the latter, but not in any detailed way. It's more of a stream of consciousness telling of those events, you see bits and pieces over time, but never in any detail. You get a little bit of a look at Conan as a person, but not too much. His family life and backstory a lightly touched on at random points. He can be a dick to his staff, by his own admission, although many times it is in a sarcastic way not meant to be taken seriously (have to be from Boston to get the sarcasm). One thing that is noticeable at the beginning is how he struggles with being intensely angry with being screwed over while at the same time telling the world and himself that he is a fortunate person who really has nothing to complain about. How often do we see this from celebs, rich people, athletes and politicians?

Overall, it's not a deep insightful doc, it's just there. Nevertheless it's entertaining and it reveals O'Brien to be a very talented performer. Worth watching.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

It's a sad ritual going back to the days before cable when after any sort of horrific crime or tragic event the news media answers the unknown with uninformed speculation posing as fact. 24-hour news and the internet have simply put this on steroids and we've all wearily grown accustomed to it.

But in the past decade this sort of useless and even harmful speculation-as-news has spread even more as non-media people have taken to comment sections, facebook and twitter to spout their own ridiculous, totally fact-free pronouncements on who did something and why. Speculation is one thing, we're all doing it, but these people push their speculation as confirmed facts. What's worse is that they often jump to accusing whole groups by association and demand retribution. And these people are not limited to any one viewpoint or ideology, they're right, left, in-between and really out there. Apparently these folks have all the answers and they want to let you know they do.

Well I have a message for those folks.

You don't know who did it, you don't have secret information, world events are not controlled by shadowy cabals, history does not follow some set path, people you disagree with politically are not responsible for all the world's ills. You don't know what information the authorities have.

We don't know if it was one person, several or many, al Qaeda, al Qaeda inspired, right-wing nuts, anarchists, or anyone with any well known cause associated with violence. It could even be someone with a grudge against the Marathon or some ill-defined hatred of Boston and/or New England. We don't know and that we includes you. You're not special.

Graffiti force closure of Joshua Tree park sites - "They (park officials)blame vandals who posted pictures of their handiwork on social
media sites such as Facebook, which enticed others to the same spot and
leave their own illicit marks." Do kids these days have no grasp of the concept of incriminating evidence?

I'll just quote this "A scion of the Scripps media family was convicted in Philadelphia on Friday of fleecing his mother and mentally disabled uncle of $3.6 million, cash he spent on cars, jewelry, and a playboy lifestyle for himself and two women - one a stripper, the other a porn star."

Monday, March 25, 2013

My bracket in my March Madness pool shot to number one before my championship pick Georgetown went down to Florida Gulf Coast. Nate Silver put it best while the debacle was unfolding:

Georgetown down 17 to a team that sounds like a regional airport.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) March 23, 2013

Pathetic. But his snark got me thinking, why not have an airport sponsor a team? You could have
different tier leagues as well, D-I teams sponsored by Chicago O'Hare, Logan, LAX etc, D-II by Allegheny County, T.F. Green and so on. You could even have leagues sponsored by different types of transportation infrastructure,such as the EZ-Pass league. Lots of opportunity there, imagine a Final Four of Jersey Turnpike, Mass Pike, Ohio Turnpike and Ft. McHenry Tunnel. The teams could function as minor leagues for the NFL and
NBA and raise badly needed revenue for our cash-strapped transportation
systems.

Yeah it sounds absurd, but no more than an institution of "higher learning" running a sports/entertainement business.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Although the old school house still has a lot of projects to be completed, I have spent the past month concentrating on getting as much done as possible before early March, to the detriment of this and the other blog (something has to give). The driving force and deadline for this redoubled effort on the house was the new kid's ETA of March 4th. Well just like his brother, Kevin arrived a few days late but made his appearance late on the 7th at the Wilmington Birth Center. Right now I'm flying almost solo taking care of Joe (who's home sick from daycare). Once Mama is up and about, it'll be back to renovation, writing and geology for me.